In the wake of a November 2005 OC Weekly article detailing how a 20-year-old Buena Park man faced prison for a robbery/carjacking he didn’t commit, prosecutors asked the Orange County Sheriff’s Department crime lab to alter key exculpatory evidence.

Veteran forensic specialist Danielle G. Wieland made the charge last month during a civil deposition related to the December 2005 wrongful conviction and imprisonment of James Ochoa, according to documents obtained by the Weekly.
The allegation is just the latest in a series of sensationally callous screw-ups by law enforcement—police, prosecutors and judges—that aligned to raid Ochoa’s house, arrest him and steal his freedom. He spent 16 months in the Orange County Jail and a California prison. Later, DNA evidence fingered the real bandit, a career criminal in Los Angeles.

The Ochoa travesty didn’t happen merely because the Orange County district attorney’s office repeatedly ignored exculpatory facts. According to Wieland’s testimony, they actively sought to convict Ochoa as mounting evidence pointed to his innocence.

At the heart of the battle was the integrity of the OCSD crime lab’s work on the case. Wieland performed numerous tests to determine if Ochoa’s DNA could be found on items the bandit inadvertently left at the crime scene: a black baseball cap, a gray plaid long-sleeve shirt and a BB gun. There was also DNA left in the stolen car that didn’t belong to the two victims. All of the sheriff’s department tests excluded Ochoa as a DNA contributor. Two other crime-lab officials independently double-checked and confirmed Wieland’s results. In her official records, she recorded “no [Ochoa] match.”

That result created a problem for the DA’s office, where officials weren’t elated that the Weekly had already written a 2,100-word pretrial article (“The Case of the Dog That Couldn’t Sniff Straight,” Nov. 6, 2005), which predicted doom for Ochoa. For once, it turns out it wasn’t the police who were stubborn. According to Wieland’s deposition, a Buena Park police detective told her before testing that “if [Ochoa’s] DNA doesn’t come back on the hat and the shirt, the case is closed.”
Prosecutors didn’t share that sentiment. On Oct. 14, 2005, they asked to meet with Wieland before she shared her findings with defense attorney Scott Borthwick, a young Santa Ana-based lawyer who’d taken the case pro bono because he thought officials were railroading Ochoa. In those meetings—one by phone, two more in person—a deputy district attorney asked Wieland to do something she knew was not supported by the science and possibly outright unethical: Tell Borthwick that Ochoa’s DNA had been found on the shirt.

“Yes,” Wieland replied. “Camille Hill from the DA’s office . . . She called me and asked me to change the conclusion that Mr. Ochoa was eliminated from [DNA found on] the left cuff of the shirt.”

According to the transcript, Hill told Wieland she “didn’t care” about the crime lab’s findings. “I want him [Ochoa] not excluded,” Wieland recalls Hill saying.

The DA’s demand alarmed crime-lab officials, who began to question why prosecutors were so “adamant” and “ranting” (Wieland’s description) about nailing Ochoa.

“I was pretty shocked and annoyed,” Wieland testified. “As a forensic scientist, we just look at the evidence.”

In a subsequent face-to-face confrontation, Hill arrived with four other DA staffers including Deputy District Attorney Christian Kim, who was assigned to Ochoa’s case. They argued that eyewitness and police-dog identifications of Ochoa as the bandit (sloppy and tainted, respectively) must have been right.

Wieland brought her own crime-lab colleagues as backup. According to Wieland’s deposition, “We kind of went back and forth [with the DA’s office] on why we felt the sample was eliminated as a contributor. And it ended up with us pretty much not backing down and saying he’s still excluded, still eliminated.”

CONTINUED...

__________________Vinny Gambini: When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick. It has to be an illusion, 'cause you're innocent. Nobody - I mean nobody - pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini, especially this one.

Hill, a veteran prosecutor and DNA expert who once worked as a forensic specialist for the Houston Police Department, thinks this is a non-story. She describes herself as a “lawyer/scientist” and defends her contact on the Ochoa case with Wieland.

“I, in no way, did anything unusual,” Hill tells the Weekly. “About every week, we ask the crime lab to reconsider findings. Sometimes, they make changes.”

Hill says she originally thought “it looked like [Ochoa’s DNA] was [on the bandit’s shirt],” but she eventually accepted the sheriff’s department’s conclusion after the crime lab shared more details from an electropherogram.

As for Wieland feeling shocked by Hill’s request to alter her findings? According to Hill, “She shouldn’t feel afraid to answer my questions.”

Despite Hill’s queries, Borthwick learned the full extent of the exculpatory evidence. But Kim continued to prosecute Ochoa, a move that surprised Wieland.

In the deposition, she remembered that Kim told her, “You know, I just don’t know about this case.” The deputy DA also told her it wasn’t his choice to go to trial. “I do recall him telling me that Marc Rozenberg [Kim’s boss] had said that he wasn’t dropping it at this point,” Wieland said.

Wieland was set to testify for the defense when, three days into the trial, Robert Fitzgerald, a sassy Superior Court judge with an embarrassing track record of being rebuked by appellate courts for judicial improprieties, confronted Ochoa outside the presence of the jury with this offer: Plead guilty and get a two-year-prison sentence, or face the possibility of life in prison if you continue the trial and the jury finds you guilty.

The threat frightened Ochoa. Later, he described to me the factors in his decision: how the Buena Park police detectives had raided his parents’ house and arrested him for a crime he didn’t commit; how prosecutors had refused to consider the weakness of their case; and, finally, of the white, suburban-dominated Orange County jury members, whom, he believed, would accept law enforcement’s word as gospel. He ignored Borthwick’s advice to the contrary and took the deal.

Wieland never got a chance to tell jurors about the DNA evidence. She learned of Ochoa’s plea decision from the Weekly. In her deposition, she said she “felt sad that he took it.”

Not everyone was upset. Within two hours of Ochoa’s guilty plea, a Buena Park cop contacted me to gloat that my article outlining Ochoa’s innocence was erroneous and “anti-police.” A veteran police-dog handler (of dubious skill and ethics) involved in the case wrote me a letter celebrating the outcome, too.

Meanwhile, Ochoa prepared for hell. Sheriff’s deputies quickly shipped him to prison. His parents and siblings had been so traumatized they moved to Texas.

Ten months later, crime-lab scientists with the California Department of Justice matched the bandit’s DNA to Jaymes Thomas McCollum, who was sitting in the Los Angeles County Jail on other auto-theft charges at the time. DA Tony Rackauckas, who—with the aid of Hill—is in the process of building his own DNA crime-lab system independent of Wieland and her colleagues, promptly filed paperwork to release Ochoa from prison.

“We were thrilled,” Wieland recalled in her deposition.

On Oct. 20, 2006, the night he got out of Centinela State Prison, Ochoa sat in a Garden Grove restaurant and told me he’d lived an indescribable nightmare. Another inmate had stabbed him. Asked what else he’d experienced, he looked down and just shook his head in silence.

See related article: Oops: Judge, DA, cops quietly admit they sent an innocent 20-year-old to prison for 16 months

__________________Vinny Gambini: When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick. It has to be an illusion, 'cause you're innocent. Nobody - I mean nobody - pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini, especially this one.

__________________Vinny Gambini: When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick. It has to be an illusion, 'cause you're innocent. Nobody - I mean nobody - pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini, especially this one.

Imagine how much of this kind of crap goes on that never gets out?? And yet all we hear over and over-----a jury found him guilty! Or----yeah it happens, but not in this case. I read stuff like this I just wanna shake some people and say WAKE UP!!! This case has so many flaws even 5 year old should see them!!!

Imagine how much of this kind of crap goes on that never gets out?? And yet all we hear over and over-----a jury found him guilty! Or----yeah it happens, but not in this case. I read stuff like this I just wanna shake some people and say WAKE UP!!! This case has so many flaws even 5 year old should see them!!!

GG

Well, yea, a 5 year old, but we're dealing with the likes of sam10, VOF, sheeee, hipcheck, MT, et. al.

BWD

__________________
A big problem with wind and solar is the need to store energy for use when needed. Nature has been solving this problem for millions of years, with coal.

What if a law enforcement lab tested an item and came up with 12 of 13 markers and a different lab tested the same item weeks later and came up with a 13 of 13 match?

Well, perhaps the outside lab was in possession of more sophisticated equipment.

Maybe DNA evidence like good wine, gets better with age.

Was the jacket stain tested for dry cleaning fluids? After all, no drycleaning fluids mixed with the blood stain, means the blood was "APPLIED OR HOWEVER YOU WANT TO SAY THAT" AFTER the jacket was drycleaned.

Well, yea, a 5 year old, but we're dealing with the likes of sam10, VOF, sheeee, hipcheck, MT, et. al.

BWD

Yes, and there are a lot more of us than that who feel DW is guilty. And if you care to note, I came out with my stance that DW was guilty before the jury was even sent out to consider the verdict, let alone render one.

So argue my position all you want. But don't go leveling the "Well if the jury found him guilty" finger in my direction. I have never debated my belief in DW's guilt based on the jury's verdict.

What I have said in the past, regarding the jury, is that with over 40 hours of deliberation before reaching a verdict, this jury did not rush into one like at the O.J. Simpson trial. The jury at least made every effort to research the evidence and to discuss the case rather than jump into a verdict.

Even though I had reached my conclusion well before the jury, I would have been more suspect of the jury had they reached a verdict with only an hour or two of discussion. There was too much evidence presented at the trial for any of it to be dismissed that quickly.

How many G posters here have really argued that DW is guilty only because the jury said he was?

Yes, and there are a lot more of us than that who feel DW is guilty. And if you care to note, I came out with my stance that DW was guilty before the jury was even sent out to consider the verdict, let alone render one.

So argue my position all you want. But don't go leveling the "Well if the jury found him guilty" finger in my direction. I have never debated my belief in DW's guilt based on the jury's verdict.

What I have said in the past, regarding the jury, is that with over 40 hours of deliberation before reaching a verdict, this jury did not rush into one like at the O.J. Simpson trial. The jury at least made every effort to research the evidence and to discuss the case rather than jump into a verdict.

Even though I had reached my conclusion well before the jury, I would have been more suspect of the jury had they reached a verdict with only an hour or two of discussion. There was too much evidence presented at the trial for any of it to be dismissed that quickly.

How many G posters here have really argued that DW is guilty only because the jury said he was?

Bob (VOF)

So please tell us then, what evidence suggests that Mr. Westerfield had anything to do with the death of Danielle vanDam?

BWD

__________________
A big problem with wind and solar is the need to store energy for use when needed. Nature has been solving this problem for millions of years, with coal.

Yes, and there are a lot more of us than that who feel DW is guilty. And if you care to note, I came out with my stance that DW was guilty before the jury was even sent out to consider the verdict, let alone render one.

snip...

Bob (VOF)

So you use the rush to judgment defense?

__________________Vinny Gambini: When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick. It has to be an illusion, 'cause you're innocent. Nobody - I mean nobody - pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini, especially this one.

Q. WHAT ABOUT THE THIRD ITEM, THE RIGHT SCRAPINGS?
A. FOR ITEM 28, WHICH WAS THE RIGHT FINGERNAIL SCRAPINGS, WE OBTAINED A PARTIAL S. T. R. PROFILE.

Q. NOW, PARTIAL S. T. R. PROFILE, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
A. THERE ARE 13 LOCATIONS THAT WE COMMONLY LOOK AT IN EACH SAMPLE, AND WE WERE UNABLE TO OBTAIN THE RESULTS FROM ALL 13 LOCATIONS. SO IT BECOMES A PARTIAL PROFILE.

Q. CAN YOU USE A PARTIAL PROFILE TO MAKE COMPARISONS TO INDIVIDUALS TO SEE IF THAT PERSON COULD OR COULDN'T HAVE LEFT THAT SAMPLE?
A. YES, YOU CAN.

Q. WERE YOU ABLE TO DO THAT IN THIS CASE?
A. YES, WE WERE.

Q. WITH WHAT RESULTS?
A. ITEM 28 MATCHED THE PROFILE OF DANIELLE VAN DAM AT THE LOCATIONS WE WERE ABLE TO OBTAIN. AND MR. WESTERFIELD IS EXCLUDED AS THE SOURCE OF THIS ITEM.
(Is Brenda still included in this partial profile?)

"...By LARRY WELBORN
The Orange County Register
Orange County prosecutors introduced DNA evidence today that a forensic scientist cannot exclude murder suspect Alejandro Avila as a donor of a tissue sample found under a fingernail of Samantha Runnion, the 5-year-old Stanton girl who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed in July 2002..."

(Avila couldn't be excluded, but how many others couldn't be excluded? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Billions? Trillions? A number with 15 zeros behind it?
Let's assign a number so it can be used to compare.
Use MATH to PROVE your points! It works! If somebody is afraid to assign a number or variable to an item, question WHY? Why don't we want to be too specific with certain items and very specific with others? Hmmm! Even I can figure that one out!
Oh yeah, if one applies numbers to this tragedy, the numbers STILL don't add up to Westerfield, regardless of what type of math the DAs office used!)

Imagine how much of this kind of crap goes on that never gets out?? And yet all we hear over and over-----a jury found him guilty! Or----yeah it happens, but not in this case. I read stuff like this I just wanna shake some people and say WAKE UP!!! This case has so many flaws even 5 year old should see them!!!

GG

All we can do GG, is try and educate people. Yesterday I took a copy of this article, an article on the Wade Case, and some side by side trial testimony to share with a co-worker. He immediately saw the problems with this case, starting with the dog. Once you get past the BS the media spun, it's pretty easy to wake people up.

__________________Vinny Gambini: When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick. It has to be an illusion, 'cause you're innocent. Nobody - I mean nobody - pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini, especially this one.

How many of you here believe DW is innocent only because other do? Or do most, if not all of you, independently believe in his innocence and just happen to share the foundations of your beliefs with others who are like minded?

If so, I would expect that that courtesy be extended to those who believe DW guilty.

CORONA: I'm 100 percent convinced that Mr. Avila is the one that kidnapped and murdered Samantha Runnion

Bob,

Feel free to jump in anytime, and do some independent thinking. Good to see you Sir.

__________________Vinny Gambini: When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick. It has to be an illusion, 'cause you're innocent. Nobody - I mean nobody - pulls the wool over the eyes of a Gambini, especially this one.